Sunday, April 20, 2008

Fascism in Theory and Practice

The only thing surprising in the major, 11-page piece which appeared in the New York times yesterday debunking the credibility of the so-called "military analysts" who daily appear on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and elsewhere, was the brazenness of the administration's disinformation campaign.

The generals named and pictured in the article were assigned "to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance," the article says. They were motivated in this assignment by their financial ties to military contractors, who reap profit from the very war these same "analysts" are cheerleading on via the national airwaves every day.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, (the generals) and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror.

The Times drew no theoretical conclusions from the set of facts they reported. That's not their job ("Just the facts, Ma'am."), and they're not in the business of political theory. However, I could not help noticing that what this story describes is fascism in its purest form.

A government, in conjunction with a corporate hierarchy (Mussolini's "corporatism") which is connected intimately to the government's own military appropriates a society's formerly-independent mass media for the purpose of supplanting independently-gathered and -reported information with official propaganda. The huge mouth, lips, and teeth of the military dicatorship crowd out all other conversation, debate, or noise.

These people have stolen our country. But as Judy Canova might say, it was our own fault. We shouldn't have left our country lying out in the open.

About Me

Born in the geographic and spiritual center of the U.S., the year before the bomb. Then blooey, everything changes, and we move around a lot, Spent my formative years seeking the origins of the sperm of the grandfathers of antiquity. And now, ain't been home since I don't remember when; lookout, you rounders, we're on the road again.